Teenagers and adults earn $20 by installing ‘Facebook Research’ app
January 30, 2019 | Investopaper
According to TechCrunch, Facebook has been paying the teenagers and adults in secret to access data from their smartphones since 2016. Facebook has been paying $20 a month plus referral fees to install the ‘Facebook Research’ app on their smartphones. The app allows Facebook to gather data on the smartphone usage habit of those paid users.
And the so-collected data includes private messages of the paid users in social media apps, the photos and videos sent by them and the web searches and browsing activities they are involved in. Similarly, it allows Facebook to track the location information from other location tracking apps installed in users smartphone.
The company spokesperson has responded by saying that the main motive of this research is to help Facebook understand how people use their smartphones by making them participate in the research. Facebook has also presented its paid users the flexibility to stop participating at any time and also assured them to not share those data with others.
The Facebook move may have violated the Apple policy since many users have installed the apps on their iPhones. Apple has not responded to the news although the spokesperson reported that they are aware of the issue.